What Devil May Cry did, that no game before it had done and no game since has quite managed to equal (and certainly with nowhere near as much style and flair), was make you feel as the protagonist in an action-heavy anime film. Though not just any anime film, mind you, but specifically one where the hero has all kinds of crazy supernatural abilities and where lengthy, elaborate battles are almost constantly raging across the four corners of the screen. In theory, stuff like that can be awesome to watch, especially if you are on the younger side and don't require much by way of plot complications to satisfy you, but the truth is that, despite the mesmerizing light show and all the pyrotechnics, this sort of thing can, and often does, get boring. It is the largely arbitrary nature of the fighting that's mostly to blame for this, since the more -- and the more wildly supernatural -- abilities you give the hero and his opponents, and the less time you spend demonstrating them and their limitations, the less the viewer will be able to keep up with what's going on, and the less invested he will remain in the action. More pedestrian anime films, like the average samurai- or military-themed ones, have an easier time of it, since everyone agrees that the range of powers and abilities of a swordsman or a modern-day soldier should be much more limited compared to, say, those of an angel or a demon, and thus easier to guess without lengthy exposition. This makes it easier for the director to handle, and thus better manipulate, the viewer's expectations, and in so doing make him care more for the outcome of each battle.

The viewer must, paradoxically, be able to form predictions on the outcome of a battle in order to care at all about it -- predictions, of course, which might and often should be frustrated, but which are nevertheless necessary in order to maintain his attention. This is what's paradoxical, or at least seemingly paradoxical, about the whole business: the goal of an anime film (as that of any work belonging to a narrative-driven medium) is to surprise the viewer (for anything that won't surprise us bores us), but in order to be more effectively surprised one must be surprised out of some previously imagined expectation. -- Note that I am here focusing solely on action scenes; plot quality has of course an even greater impact on the viewer's level of involvement with a film, and a strong plot will always make up for any deficiencies in the setup and direction of the action, but forgetting this for the moment and isolating the action scenes from the rest, this is how things stand.

Now in the world of videogames the "arbitrariness" problem vanishes, since there is nothing arbitrary at all about a videogame: interactions are always resolved according to a strict set of rules. We know from the start, or very soon learn, exactly what our avatar is capable of as well as his opponents. These parameters determine the level of challenge of each encounter, failing to overcome which will always lead to death. There are no last-minute rescues here, as in the movies; no fortuitous discoveries of inner strength reserves: the hero does not always survive -- indeed he usually dies -- which is why not only is playing an action game more fun than watching an action film, but also watching someone else play an action game can be more fun than watching an action film. To cut this short and finally get to the freaking point: in 2001 the world had had about enough of boring anime action films; what it needed was the experience of such a film in the form of a videogame, and Capcom was the company that first figured out how to do it.

But how was this accomplished? What did this game have that so many of its predecessors in the (by that time reasonably well-populated) 3D action genre lack? In five words: a fuckload of cool moves. You can't really expect to create a decent simulation of the action scenes in stuff like Vampire Hunter D, with just kick, punch, slash, jump and magic attack, which is more or less about all that previous 3D brawlers had to offer. Triple jump, shoot with shotgun on the way down, double piercing move and slash in the face -- yeah motherfucker. The anime thrives on speed, agility, variety, and the only way to translate is to make a game that is fast, smooth and . Worth pointing out is also the fact that a 3D game is much more suited than a 2D one could ever be. DMC was one of those games (along with Wolfenstein 3D, Tenchu, GTA III, among others) where the extra start to pay off.

And that's what it comes down to: what we have here is an action puzzler in which the puzzles are for retards and the action non-existent, so that most of the time you get the worst of both worlds: a stage whose "solution" you figure out in a single glance, but the implementation of which is a chore that takes several tedium-filled minutes. Before long you'll be thankful for the brief pointless gimmick stages in which you pretty much do nothing, and which, compared to the longer ones, will come to feel like a refreshment. And, on top of all that, the pacing is completely shot: there are stages half-way through the game that are easier than the second one. And though in principle additional challenge can be found by replaying stages for improved stats (goo balls used, no. of moves, clear time), this sort of thing only improves already great games — in crap games it merely increases the aggravation.